OiNK founder free after two-plus years of legal troubles

A UK jury has found OiNK admin Alan Ellis not guilty of conspiracy to defraud …

A UK court has acquitted the admin of music sharing site OiNK of the one and only charge brought against him: conspiracy to defraud copyright owners. Twenty-six-year-old Alan Ellis was unanimously found not guilty by a jury in a Teesside Crown Court Friday, despite efforts from the music industry to paint him as a "cunning" liar who made money off the hard work of others.

The OiNK drama goes back to October of 2007 when police seized OiNK's servers and arrested Ellis after two international music rights groups, IFPI and BPI, spent two years working to investigate the tracker. At the time, the Cleveland Police said that the "hundreds of thousands of pounds" being brought in were stashed in various bank accounts, and the IFPI claimed that there were over 180,000 "hard-core" file sharers leaking hot demos or prerelease mixes to the invite-only service.

Police quickly followed up on Ellis' arrest by pursuing a number of OiNK's users, though they were unable to succeed in trying to find a personal connection between Ellis and the users. Ellis was eventually released on bail, but the case continued to drag on for more than two years. As part of their argument, prosecutors called OiNK a "cash cow," alleging that Ellis made �300,000 off some 21 million downloads.

Ellis, of course, argued that his involvement was akin to providing a service like Google—OiNK merely allowed users to find what they were looking for from other users, he said. When University of London professor Birgitte Andersenok testified that file sharing has actually led to moremusicsales, music industry prosecutors called her account "garbage" and described Ellis as telling "persistent, cunning, calculated lies," according to The Gazette.

Ellis' defense lawyer made a point that Ellis was in regular contact with copyright owners before OiNK was shut down in 2007, but that he was never told to stop what he was doing by the IFPI or anyone else. In fact, musicians actually used his site to promote their own music before the IFPI turned around and had the site taken down. "If anybody’s acting dishonestly it’s them," Ellis' lawyer Alex Stein said.

Evidently the jury agreed, by voting unanimously in Ellis' favor after hearing closing arguments Friday morning. The case was the first of its kind in the UK, making the jury's decision a landmark one that is sure to be a pain in the music industry's behind for years to come as it tries to keep playing P2P Whac-a-Mole. The IFPI did not respond to our request for comment on Ellis' acquittal, but BPI told The Register that it was unhappy with the decision. "This is a hugely disappointing verdict which is out of line with decisions made in similar cases around the world, such as The Pirate Bay," BPI said. "The case shows that artists and music companies need better protection."

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

Ha ha ha ha ha! Awesome. Conspiracy is the UK police's charge of choice when they don't have any actual evidence and can't be bothered to fit you up. This is different from the Pirate Bay - they were charged with an actual offence, not conspiracy. The conspiracy charge was an epic fail because they weren't any conspirators.

I'm not going to comment on the legality or not of what Oink did, but it's really good news that the music industry has been bitch slapped. As a previous commentator said, the artists themselves have a lot more power now to distribute their work. When downloaded music becomes the norm then the parasites who run this business will wither and die. It's important that these stakes are placed in the ground. If the entertainment industry has their way the whole of the Internet would be tightly regulated and the fat cats will get fatter off ever more exploited artists and (by proxy) the consumers.

If the artists used the site to promote their music, why would the artists need better protection?

Obviously the artists are suffering self-inflicted harm and must be protected from themselves.

The ARTISTS probably welcomed the chance to have music lovers be the "champions", exposing their music to a like-minded group of peers. On oink, You got exposed to a wide range of things by people who really knew about their nice. This was the "long tail" come alive, for real. I already owned 800 CD's before I ever got on oink and even from that base, you would not believe the jump in my music purchasing habits and live music attendance - and the change in the breadth of music I buy - just from having been on that place.

So this benefits both the ARTISTS, who on average probably get screwed by the MUSIC INDUSTRY COMPANIES and therefore make their money from people going to their shows etc, as well as the industry itself who hogs all the money from the CD's.

As far as I'm concerned the music industry shouldn't be vilifying the person who created that community - they should actually pay him, for his services in making that site - and now to consult them on how to get people to buy more music. That's actually what he did.

"This is a hugely disappointing verdict which is out of line with decisions made in similar cases around the world, such as The Pirate Bay," BPI said. "The case shows that artists and music companies need better protection."

As if the music industry gives a flying fuck about artists. As it stands, artists receive a very minor portion of all profits made from the sales of their product.

Originally posted by d_jedi:Very disappointed with the verdict.I await the inevitable appeal..

According to another site this verdict is unappealable. Might be because it's a criminal trial, not a civil trial. E.g. AFAIK the prosecutor can't appeal an acquittal in the US (and can't file a new trial for the same charge because of double jeopardy).

I don't know about British law specifically, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say he probably can't sue anybody as a result of this case. Being found not guilty isn't an automatic route to some sort of compensation. In this case, it could easily be argue that there was plenty of evidence to at least charge him, and lets be honest - he could easily have been found guilty given the depressing history of such BS cases. And I'm pretty sure being called a liar isn't going to rise to the defamation.

Originally posted by d_jedi:Very disappointed with the verdict.I await the inevitable appeal..

quote:

Originally posted by Grashnak:I don't know about British law specifically, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say he probably can't sue anybody as a result of this case. Being found not guilty isn't an automatic route to some sort of compensation.

Welcome to UK law. As this was a criminal case there can be no appeal, nor can he get any compensation for loss of business - particularly as the "business" in question was the site he was being tried on. It's one in the eye for both parties, but I'm glad he got off - most of the money was there purely because he didn't know what to do with it.

I'm not sure if this is the case in jury trials but if I recall correctly in the UK, in addition to declaring a defendant "guilty", or "not guilty", the judge can come back with a postive declaration that the defendant is found "innocent". Is that true?

In which case, shouldnt the falsely accused person be able to sue on that basis?

A lot of people are commenting on how the labels don't help the artists out all that much but how was OiNK helping them?

OiNK didn't share any of the revenue with them (didn't see any info besides him paying server costs) and it's not like anyone downloads an album and actually thinks to themselves, "well, now that I have a copy I might as well buy another" so I don't think it's fair to say that artists got more exposure which led to sales.

In other words it seems like OiNK is just as bad as the labels. Neither one of them creates the content which they receive money for. But at least the artists get some fractions of a cent from the labels.

Originally posted by floyd42:A lot of people are commenting on how the labels don't help the artists out all that much but how was OiNK helping them?

OiNK didn't share any of the revenue with them (didn't see any info besides him paying server costs) and it's not like anyone downloads an album and actually thinks to themselves, "well, now that I have a copy I might as well buy another" so I don't think it's fair to say that artists got more exposure which led to sales.

Actually, that does happen. I am an example of a similar subject: I don't have anywhere near the ability to afford all the music I've got. But because of p2p I've grown loyalty to and appreciation for certain artists. If they ever come 'round my area, and/or if I find myself able to buy their albums/merch/whatever, I'll do so. Though I'll try to make sure my money goes to the artists, not the scumbag recording industry.

P2P can be likened to traditional advertising. Exposure = sales. And there are always people out there who recognize the contributions of the artists, and either buy the works or financially compensate them some other way. I daresay they make up the majority of us, actually. Saying that everyone who downloads is all about taking things for free and never paying for anything is unfounded and unfair.

quote:

Originally posted by floyd42:In other words it seems like OiNK is just as bad as the labels. Neither one of them creates the content which they receive money for. But at least the artists get some fractions of a cent from the labels.

Do BitTorrent seeders get paid for seeding? No? Was the prosecution in this case able to demonstrate that Ellis kept any of that $300k for himself instead of spending it on site maintenance? No?

I reckon that the labels make far more money that they don't deserve from the work of others than OiNK did.